Donald Trump to hold crunch meeting with deputy attorney general on Thursday

President Donald Trump and his embattled deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein have spoke on Monday and will meet on Thursday at the White House amid uncertainty about Mr Rosenstein’s fate.

Thursday is the same day that Mr Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, and a woman who has accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, are set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia election meddling, had been expecting to be fired on Monday following critical comments he made about Mr Trump.

President Donald Trump talks to Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations (Evan Vucci/AP)

Mr Trump is currently in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, so the two will meet on Thursday “when the President returns to Washington, D.C.”.

The latest move comes after a New York Times report of Mr Rosenstein’s comments in 2017.

That report and an unsigned opinion piece by a senior official in the Republican administration played to some of the president’s concerns about a secret Deep State trying to undermine him from within the government.

The administration official, whom Mr Trump has called for a federal investigation to unmask, wrote that there was a group of officials working to safeguard the country from the president’s most dangerous impulses.